James May

Cold comfort

The
fundamental problem with any journey to the North Pole is that there are, in
fact, two: the Magnetic North Pole, which is a physical phenomenon, and the
True North Pole, which is a cartographical convention established from the
shape of the Earth and the axis of its rotation. Bored yet? This is only the
beginning.

You
might wonder why this is. Well, the Magnetic North Pole is useful for most
basic navigation as it determines the direction of a compass needle. Unfortunately,
it moves around a bit over the years, and severely buggers up map-making. Also,
for the purposes of dividing the globe into lines of longitude, which relate to
time as well as position, the True North Pole is better because it's right at
what we think of as the ‘top' of the planet. Serious maps are oriented towards
True North, and if navigating with a magnetic compass, as most amateur sailors
and airmen do, it is important to allow for something called ‘magnetic
variation'; that is, how many degrees away from True North your Magnetic North
is. This changes around the planet and is indicated on maps using something
called ‘isogonal lines'. In London, for example, magnetic variation is
currently about 3 degrees west. Bloody hell.

It's
important to establish which North Pole you are talking about when using an
expression such as ‘let's go to the North Pole'. Technically, if you are at the
North Pole, everything is to the south, no matter which way you turn. If you
are at the Magnetic North Pole, then the True North Pole is to the south, and
if you are heading to the Magnetic North Pole and find yourself at the True
North Pole, the North Pole is still to the North. Unless, that is, you are
working to true bearings, in which case you will stand at the True North Pole
with your Magnetic compass still pointing north, but actually that's south.

Anyway ­
we decided to head for the Magnetic North Pole; or rather, Clarkson and Hammond
did. Clarkson, the best off-road driver in the world, would go in a Toyota
pick-up truck, and Hammond would eschew at least a century of progress and be
towed there by some dogs. I didn't actually want to go atall. I hate snow, I
hate extreme cold, I hate dressing up and I knew it would involve quite a lot
of camping, since there are no hotels around there.

But
Jeremy insisted, saying I should come along as his navigator. This was pretty
insulting really, because navigating to the Magnetic North Pole is a simple
matter of heading north with a compass, obviously. Even if, starting from
Canada, I followed the wrong end of the needle I'd know about it once we got to
Mexico.

Now we
have completed this great odyssey, I can categorically confirm that going to
the North Pole, by whatever means, is a completely futile and miserable
exercise. It starts with the special Arctic clothing, all of which is covered
in stupid zips that catch in everything and makes a really irritating and
deafening rustling noise if you so much as scratch your head. Doing a poo in
the Arctic involves removing 10 layers of this stuff and then quite literally
freezing your nuts off. And that's if you don't get eaten by a bear while your
trolleys are down.

You
might imagine that endless vistas of snow, interrupted only by theoccasional
abstract ice sculpture, is something quite beautiful to behold,and it is. For
an hour or so. But after a few days it's a bit like looking at a screwed-up
sheet of plain A4 paper. Open the freezer compartment of your fridge and look
at that for two weeks to get an idea of what it's like. The extreme cold ­
minus 30 at times ­ is a nuisance. Because the atmosphere is extremely dry up
there, none of your personal effects ever freezes solid; they just become very
cold. My favourite line from Jeremy: "Ooh, this pillow's nice and toasty warm.
No, hang on, what I meant was it's f***ing freezing."

However,
the instant you spill anything ­ your gin and tonic, say ­ then your trousers
become part of the landscape. I took a packet of Johnson's baby wipes with me,
for the purpose of ‘washing', but within 10 minutes they'd become a scented
iceberg. Only in the Arctic have I been presented with the problem of having to
keep my tins of tonic warm enough to drink. And don't imagine that we were nice
and warm in the car ­ we weren't allowed to have the heating on because it
would interfere with our special misery-spec Arctic on-board cameras.

I hardly
dare remind myself of the camping. It's not just that the tent had to be
erected and dismantled every day, or that the zips on that always stuck as
well, or even that the rudimentary kerosene stove set light to my face. The
real problem was having to share it with Clarkson, who was incapable of helping
to put the thing up, even though the job required the use of nothing more than
his favourite tool, a hammer.

"Doing a poo in the Arctic involves removing 10 layers of this stuff and then quite literally freezing your nuts off"

I'm not
a great camper but Clarkson is a worse one. Every night he would zip himself up
completely in his cocoon-style sleeping bag, even his head, and then blaspheme
into the thick down all night long. It was like sharing a tent with a big
sweary maggot.

There
was little respite during the day, whatever the day was. Because it was the
summer, the sun simply cavorted up and down the sky like some cosmic fairground
attraction, and at one point we had a huge row over whether it was lunchtime or
midnight. We honestly didn't know. Driving was a simple matter of enduring the
constant crashing and rattling of the overloaded Toyota, punctuated by the
occasional dull report of another exploding tin of Schweppes as we crept
further north (Magnetic).

I
honestly believe that it was only the drink that kept us going. Even asking
Clarkson if he'd like some ice in his G&T wasn't funny after a day or so.
The conversation started well enough, with intelligent debate about politics
and geography, but after a few days we were arguing for hours about the
significance of just-in-time manufacturing versus the importance of interchangeability
of parts, and by day four we had been reduced to food fantasies involving
sandwich spread and sausages. I cheered Clarkson up with the caviar and quails
eggs I'd smuggled past the Arctic exploration nazis, and he rewarded me by
shooting my tin of Spam, for which I wish an especially virulent pox upon him
still.

And when
we finally arrived at the pole, there was nothing. No monument, no visitors'
centre, not even a cairn of ice cubes. It was just more snow. We intended to
leave a small Top Gear flag we had made, but discovered that we'd forgotten to
bring the stick for it. So, I have been to the Magnetic North Pole, or 78
degrees 35.7 north by 104 degrees 11.9 west.

With the
mission accomplished, the doctor we'd taken along as part of our small support
team asked me, "So, James, now you've done it, do you think your life will be
better or worse for the experience?"

In the
end I decided it would be worse. Because occasionally I would remember it.